Thursday, November 7, 2013

The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973)

Two years after maverick auteur Melvin Van
Peebles unleashed his film about a black revolutionary undermining white power
structures, Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasssss
Song (1971), similar subject matter hit screens in this provocative movie,
which was—amazingly—released by a major studio. Even more amazingly, The Spook Who Sat by the Door was one of
the only ’70s studio movies both starring and directed by African-Americans. Co-written
by Sam Greenlee, upon whose novel the picture is based, The Spook Who Sat by the Door presents the story of Dan Freeman
(Lawrence Cook), a black man recruited to be the CIA’s first officer of color
as part of a political stunt. At first, Dan plays the role of an Uncle Tom,
accepting demeaning assignments and patronizing treatment while trudging
through five years of running a copy machine at CIA headquarters—his work
station is by a doorway, hence the title, which boldly mixes two meanings of
the word “spook.” Once Dan leaves the CIA, however, he employs his government
training to build a revolutionary army intent on toppling the white
establishment. The story culminates, inevitably, with a riot that Dan sees as
the first battle in an outright race war.

Although it’s ostensibly an
action/thriller of sorts, with dialogue exchanges about conspiracy theories and
plenty of violent scenes (especially toward the end), The Spook Who Sat by the Door can be watched in many ways. Thanks,
in part, to cartoonish portrayals of white people—shown to be so arrogant that they
can’t detect sedition in their midst—the picture is something of a social
satire. And yet it’s also a call to arms and/or a warning, depending on where
the viewer stands on the issues being explored. Alas, while it’s tempting to
credit the filmmakers with far-ranging sophistication, as if the intention was
to make a complex cinematic artifact, it’s equally possible that Greenlee and
the film’s key creative personnel—including director Ivan Dixon, best known as
a cast member on the long-running sitcom Hogan’s
Heroes (1965-1971)—arrived at such complexity not through discipline but
rather through the opposite. The Spook
Who Sat by the Door is all over the place in terms of storytelling and
tone, which makes it difficult to consider most of what occurs on screen
completely deliberate. The acting is uneven, the photography is flat, and the
narrative rhythm is erratic. Kudos to jazz great Herbie Hancock for his ballsy
score, though, because his signature electronic flourishes accentuate the
nerviness of the story.

Ultimately, the mere existence of The Spook Who Sat by the Door is the
most remarkable aspect of the picture, because it’s not as if Hollywood studios
were regularly in the business of manufacturing revolutionary propaganda, even during the anything-goes ’70s. In fact, it’s especially interesting to consider The Spook Who Sat by the Door
side-by-side with The Man (1972), a studio
picture imagining what happens when a black man becomes president via line of
succession. Whereas The Spook Who Sat by
the Door is unquestionably a byproduct of the Black Power/Black Pride
movement, The Man is a Rod
Serling-penned melodrama in which the hero expresses constant ambivalence about
being asked to represent his race. Together, the films offer a troubling vision
of a fraught moment in American sociopolitical life. On its own, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is as
subtle as a hand grenade.